Avocado's Number wrote:
jjjjjjjjjjj wrote:If witnesses recant in law, it's solid grounds for an appeal and even vacation of the decision.
Actually, it's generally not grounds for an appeal, much less "solid grounds." At most, it's grounds for a trial court to reconsider its own judgment, and in most criminal cases (where this kind of thing occurs rather often), it's usually pretty weak grounds for vacating the judgment. There are all kinds of reasons for witnesses to recant their testimony, and those reasons are usually not based on a sudden desire to stop lying under oath and start acting like honest people.
But in any event, this situation isn't closely analogous to witness recantation. Jordan Hasay is not, as far as I know, recanting an earlier allegation that she was impeded by GG. She's simply purporting to withdraw her protest of a referee's decision, apparently because the subsequent events have put her in an unpleasant situation.
A more analogous situation, I think, occurred in the 1972 Olympic trials. The first three finishers in the 10,000 meters were Shorter, Galloway, and Anderson, who crossed just ahead of Bacheler. After the race, Bacheler was disqualified for interfering with Anderson. In the marathon trials, Shorter and Moore finished first and second, and Bacheler and Galloway finished third and fourth. Bacheler and Galloway proposed that they be allowed to switch events, with Galloway running his preferred marathon and Bacheler running his preferred 10,000 meters. The officials refused to allow that, unless every other finisher in the 10,000 meters agreed to give up their rights as Olympic alternates in the 10,000 meters in order to allow Bacheler to be "reinstated" as the fourth finisher with the right to take Galloway's place in the 10,000 meters. The proposed switch did not occur.
In the GG-Hasay case, USATF is apparently claiming that "all parties" have agreed to the reinstatement of GG, but I haven't seen any indication that USATF ever sought the approval of all other finishers in the race. Reinstating GG may be a good resolution for GG, Hasay, Salazar, USATF, Nike, and some others, but it's not obvious that it's good for any of the other finishers in the race. And even if it were acceptable to all of the other finishers, it's still not clear to me that it would be an appropriate outcome.